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The Amplificathon is an annual, multifandom, points-based podfic challenge, aiming to increase the fannish diversity of available podfic. All entries are archived at the Audiofic podfic archive.

Amplificathon has a community on LiveJournal and a mirror community on Dreamwidth. Podficcers can and do post podfic to the community even when the challenge is not running. As stated in the community profile, posting podfic to Amplificathon gives the Audiofic Archive archivists permission to archive it[1]; podficcers who want permanent hosting for their files often cross-post to Amplificathon just to take advantage of this service. The community also hosts two other podfic challenges: podbang and amplirecathon.

Each year, the three fandoms with the most podfics in the archive are determined in order to calculate points.[2] From 2008 to 2010, these were due South, Stargate Atlantis, and Supernatural. In 2011 and 2012, due South was replaced with Merlin. In 2013, the number of "giant" fandoms was expanded to five: Supernatural & Supernatural RPF, Stargate Atlantis, Harry Potter, Merlin, and My Chemical Romance.[3] In 2014, giant fandoms were defined as fandoms with over 500 podfics on the archive: avengers movie, harry potter, merlin, my chemical romance, sherlock, spn & spn rpf, stargate atlantis, teen wolf.[4]

2008

The first Amplificathon was held in 2008, and ran for eight weeks, from April 7 to June 2. It was moderated by general_jinjur, Raz0r.girl and anatsuno. A total of 42 readers participated.[5]

Unlike most ficathons, Amplificathon was set up as a competition, with points awarded for recording podfics from fandoms, or for pairings, not previously represented in the Audiofic Archive. The competition format proved to be a resounding success, with six hundred new podfics added to the archive, as well as adding a hundred and five previously unrepresented fandoms and an uncountable number of new pairings.[6] The most points had been earned by twasadark, followed by leviticus_lied and jadesfire2808.

Prize banners and podfics for the winners were provided by volunteer podficcers and fan artists. Other special prizes were awarded for remarkable achievements during Amplificathon, such as First Brave Poster, Most New Fandoms Introduced, Largest Single Podfic and Most Minutes Recorded.

2009

In its second year, the challenge ran from March 30th to June 1st, 2009. 34 readers participated. First place went to sly_hostetter (820 points), followed by rhea314 (741 points) and luzula (362 points).[7]

New developments included the posting of podfic in languages other than English, which was specifically encouraged by general_jinjur.

References

↑The top fandoms on the archive each year can be an indicator of which fandoms are currently popular that year overall, but due to the small size of podfic fandom, results can be skewed by the interests of a few particularly prolific podficcers, who in turn may entice more people from that fandom into podficcing. Supernatural, SGA, and Merlin were all Fandoms That Ate Fandom and were still on the air. due South was a moderately large fandom whose show had ended in 1998, but when the archive opened in 2006, dS was in the midst of a fandom renaissance (or at least continuance), possibly due to the mid-2000s DVD releases. Early podficcers like Zabira may also have had an impact. Harry Potter was a huge fandom in the early to mid 2000s, but apparently not among podficcers, who didn't start making serious inroads on the back catalog of fic until more recently.